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"It's an ideal that appears more distant today," Cabestan says about ethnic harmony in China. |
BEIJING — The recent days of deadly violence in the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region have shattered the government’s claim of a monolithic China where a vast homogeneous Han majority lives peacefully side by side with a sprinkling of ethnic and religion minorities.
"As things are now, it is triggering sarcasm," Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a China expert at Hong Kong's Baptist University, told Agence France Presse (AFP), on Thursday, July 9.
"(The riots) show that China remains a violent country, with serious tensions in society."
Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, has been boiling since Sunday when nearly 1000 Muslim Uighurs took to the streets to protest discrimination and cultural and religious controls.
At least 156 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded when police unleashed a massive crackdown on the Turkish-speaking ethnic minority, in China's worst ethnic conflict for decades.
Analysts believe the unrest, which drew global calls for China to exercise self restraint, exposes the political concept of ethnic and social harmony launched by Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2004.
The concept calls upon the 1.3 billion people of the country, divided into 56 ethnic groups, to help build a peaceful and prosperous society.
"He [Jintao] has largely failed at this level. It's an ideal that appears more distant today," contends Cabestan.
Hu Xingdou, an influential commentator and economist at the Beijing Institute of Technology, agrees.
He believes what happened in Urumqi demonstrates Beijing’s failure to bridge gaps between the majority Han and the other ethnicities.
"The harmonious society is not something real. It's merely an ideal, or an objective," he said.
"The fact that the government has come up with this objective shows that in reality, there's quite a deal of disharmony."
Fearful
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| The government has closed all mosques in Urumqi under the pretext of stifling ethnic violence. |
In tense Xinjiang, an atmosphere of fear is reigning as fearful Uighurs watched the government’s show of force.
As riot police and soldiers took up position in the streets of Urumqi, more military trucks rolled into the Muslim-majority region.
"This makes me scared and I think it's meant to," a Uighur woman called Adila told Reuters.
"What can we do against so many soldiers?"
President Hu and the other eight members of the ruling Communist Party's elite Politburo issued a clear threat.
"The planners of the incident, the organizers, key members and the serious violent criminals must be severely punished."
Several human rights groups have expressed concern over the fate of 1,434 people who were taken into police custody over Sunday’s unrest, saying they could be tortured or mistreated.
Uighurs accuse the government of settling millions of ethnic Han in their territory, a vast region with large oil and gas reserves, with the ultimate goal of obliterating its identity and culture.
They also cite a recent government plan that has brought the teaching of Mandarin Chinese in Xinjiang schools, replacing their local dialect.
Salting the wounds of Uighurs, governmental officials closed all mosques in Urumqi under the pretext of stifling ethnic violence.
"We still don't know whether we'll be able to pray tomorrow," laments Bai Ping, a Han convert to Islam.
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